This invention relates to a feeding apparatus and more particularly to an apparatus for charging an elevated mass of combustible material into a combustion chamber.
In most municipal incinerator facilities, collected refuse to be burned normally is deposited in an elevated holding chamber from where it is gravity fed into a combustion chamber and onto an upper end of a stoker where the refuse is burned. Typically, a mechanism is provided for feeding the refuse from the holding chamber into the incinerator chamber. The principal function of the feeding mechanism is to feed the refuse into the combustion chamber at a controlled rate and to seal the combustion chamber from the holding chamber so that the products of combustion will not escape through the charging chute into the holding chamber.
Most of the mechanisms used in the prior art for feeding refuse from a holding chamber into an incinerator chamber are relatively complicated in design and not entirely satisfactory in performance. It thus has been found to be desirable to provide such a mechanism which is simple in design and more effective in performance.